Saturday, December 07, 2013

Why Should Anyone Believe Kerry?

Secretary of State John Kerry was
back in Israel today with a three-part task. One was to reassure the Israeli
government that the weak nuclear deal the administration cut with Iran is not
threat to the Jewish state’s security. The second was, as I wrote on Wednesday,
to present the Israelis with a detailed plan about the future of the West Bank
after a peace deal with the Palestinians is achieved. The third was to convince
the Palestinian Authority to play along and to accept the scheme that
theoretically guarantees Israel’s security by the stationing of U.S. or other
foreign troops along the Jordan River.

Kerry may be still riding the rush he got from succeeding in persuading the
Iranians to sign a deal that he has tried to represent as a diplomatic triumph,
but he’s likely to strike out on all three counts in the Middle East–and for
reasons that are not unrelated to his diplomatic coup. The Israelis now have
even less reason to trust Kerry and the U.S. than they did before. And having
watched how the Iranians were, despite the enormous economic and military
leverage the U.S. had over them, able to hold out and retain all of their
nuclear infrastructure and stockpile, there is absolutely no reason for the
Palestinians not to be just as patient with Kerry, confident that they need
never give up their demands for territory, Jerusalem, lack of security
guarantees for Israel, and even right of return for refugees. Though he can
pretend that he has made the world safer with his Iran deal and contend that the
peace negotiations he has promoted will also solve the region’s problems, the
parties involved no longer believe a word he says.

Leaving aside the obvious shortcomings of the Iran deal from the point of
view of those who believe that it does nothing to prevent the Islamist regime
from gaining a nuke in the long term, there is tremendous irony in Kerry
arriving in Israel to ask the Netanyahu government for more concessions on the
heels of the Geneva signing. For years the Israelis had been told that if they
were more accommodating to the Palestinians, it would convince the West to do
its best on the Iranian nuclear threat. Though the logic of such linkage was
faulty, it was at least a coherent argument. But after having trashed years of
American pronouncements (including President Obama’s campaign promise to force
the Iranians to give up their nuclear program) by legitimizing Iran’s nuclear
program and right to enrich uranium, Kerry has effectively destroyed that
argument. Having embarked on what appears to be a misguided attempt to achieve
détente with a hate-spewing, terrorist-sponsoring nuclear scofflaw state, the
U.S. assurances about having Israel’s back ring hollow. While there is no
alternative to the U.S. alliance, the Netanyahu government knows that it is on
its own with respect to security issues in a way that it may not have felt in
decades. As much as Israel has always been dubious about putting its safety in
the hands of anyone, this is hardly the moment to be selling it on the notion
that it can rely on Washington.

By the same token, the Palestinians have also been paying attention to the
Iran talks. And the evidence for this came almost as soon as Kerry arrived when
it was reported that the Palestinians rejected the security measures that the
U.S. envisions out of hand. Palestinian sources told
the Times of Israel that the plan, which was predicated on the notion of a
complete Israeli withdrawal from strategic areas of the West Bank along the 1967
lines and a new partition of Jerusalem, was unacceptable because it would
prolong “the occupation.” That should alert the Americans to the fact that the
Palestinians have little interest in peace talks since in this context
“occupation” seems to be referring to pre-1967 Israel and not to West Bank
settlements. Nor, as I wrote earlier this week, are the Palestinians budging
from their refusal to recognize the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state,
something that would signal the end of the conflict rather than merely a pause
in it.

If the Palestinians’ genuine goal is a two-state solution and peace, their
rejectionist attitude is as crazy as their previous three refusals of statehood.
But even if we were to believe despite abundant proof to the contrary that they
do want a two-state solution, with Kerry on the other side of the table, why
should the Palestinians be any less tough in these talks than the Iranians were
in theirs?

Kerry’s ego may have been stroked by the Iranian deal, but his already shaky
credibility is shot. There is no reason for Israel to believe American
assurances and even less reason for the Palestinians not to think that they have
more to gain from saying no than yes. But the consequences of this diplomatic
farce are more far-reaching than the souring of relations between Israel and the
United States. By setting the Middle East up for certain diplomatic failure,
Kerry has set the stage for a third intifada and threatened the Israelis with it
himself. He may think he can blame Israel with the violence that may come after
the negotiations blow up but, like the almost inevitable Iranian betrayal of the
nuclear talks, what follows will be largely on his head.

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